


splitbolt

by heartcondition



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Fusion, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Dialogue Heavy, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Strained Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-05 13:22:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21209243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartcondition/pseuds/heartcondition
Summary: Soonyoung is always going somewhere. Either leaving, about to leave, or already gone.





	splitbolt

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. written for hozier's it will come back   
2\. a splitbolt is, ironically, used to hold a the two parts of a spliced wire together.   
3\. eternal sunshine of the spotless mind is a confusing movie, so if you haven't seen it, you probably will have to go watch it or look up a plot synopsis to make this fic comprehensible. i know the movie has the memories in a reverse chronology, but it just was not working for me in this format so, non linear! and increased non-clarity   
4\. have you ever wanted to read 11k of people arguing? you've come to the right place. ngl im OG snhnist but in true heartconition fashion i like to imagine all the ways something can go wrong rather than right. mismatched love languages yadda yadda   
5\. why is this center aligned? for the vibes.

The electrodes make Jihoon’s skin itch.

Jeonghan glances at him warily. “Is this even okay? You have work tomorrow.”

“It’s not like there’s a recovery time,” Jihoon says. “It’s not surgery.”

Jeonghan crosses his arms, glancing sideways out the door, aware he’s about to be herded out into the lobby so the staff can begin the procedure. “Are you sure you want to do this? Every single memory of him? Even ones that are—tangential.”

Jihoon sighs through his nose. The detector ring the last nurse lowered around his head is blocking the upper half of his vision, and it’s starting to annoy him. “I’d rather do it than not.”

“Jihoon-ah,” Jeonghan scolds. “It’s Soonyoung.”

Jihoon’s heartbeat quickens, beeping out over the monitor. He stares at the tiny factory number printed on the inside of the magnetic coils of the scanner. If he keeps his head perfectly in place, Jeonghan’s just a pair of legs, and he doesn’t have to have this conversation anymore.

“We’re going to have to ask you to step outside, now,” says the nurse.

Jihoon closes his eyes. The nurse closes the door. He notes idly that the Lacuna offices kind of smell like the dentist’s, sour and minty all at once. 

“The process may be alarming at first,” the nurse says flatly. “The memories that come to you may feel disjointed. Try not to panic—it becomes quite difficult on our end when your heart rate goes up.”

Jihoon breathes through his nose, calm and resolute. There shouldn’t be any surprises, right? It’s just his own life. He's lived it all before.

And, besides. Jihoon knows how it works; the longer you carry the bricks of your last relationship around, the more likely you are to build the same fucking house.

-

Over the slope of Soonyoung’s shoulder, Jihoon’s alarm clock hits midnight, the numbers a bright, scarlet red. On the nightstand, Soonyoung’s phone chimes, vibrating unpleasantly against the wood. 

“Turn your vibrate off,” Jihoon complains, groggy. With his eyes barely open, he flings an arm out in the dark to whack Soonyoung lightly in the chest. “Shit always makes me feel like my teeth are gonna fall out of my head.” 

Soonyoung rolls over and hums, unlocking his phone in an instant. It’s been passwordless as long as Jihoon has known him. Click. His face glows in the white light of the screen, almost disembodied in the dark. He flips the side-switch to put it on silent, reading the notifications tab a little longer before locking it and setting it back facedown. 

“Hey,” Soonyoung says, scooching closer under the blankets. He has reddened pillow creases indented into one cheek. In the dark, the shadows of them make him look like a cracked porcelain doll. He places a palm across the flat of Jihoon’s stomach, smooth and warm. “Guess what.”

Jihoon sighs, then begins to laugh quietly, turning his head where it rests on the pillow to squint at Soonyoung, looming slightly over him, propped halfway up onto his elbow. Soonyoung’s always been obsessed with this app that sends him useless trivia every few hours—it’s often the first thing he says to anyone. 

“What,” Jihoon says, indulging him.

“Fun fact.” Soonyoung’s hand slides to Jihoon’s flank and stays there, hot. “Every human being has been a single cell for about thirty minutes.”

“Amazing,” Jihoon says, yawning. Soonyoung’s blunt nail scratches at his side dully. 

“I could have fit you in the palm of my hand,” Soonyoung says, eyes gleaming.

Jihoon rolls onto his side, trying to get comfortable again. He moves Soonyoung’s arm beneath his head, using it as a pillow and closes his eyes. “You wouldn’t have even been born yet.” He does the math in his head. “I don’t even think you would’ve had hands.”

Soonyoung relaxes again, flat on his back as he looks at the ceiling. He’ll complain of a sore shoulder in the morning from the way Jihoon’s positioned his arm, but he’s not going to take it away, and Jihoon knows it. “Still,” Soonyoung says, hushed. “I would have fit you in the palm of my hand.”

Jihoon’s nearly asleep now. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he mutters.

“No, it does,” Soonyoung says, a sureness to it. Jihoon feels cool air rush beneath the sheets as Soonyoung continues shifting around. “I think it does.”

“It’s too cold for this,” Jihoon complains, burrowing deeper into the collar of his puffy coat, hands shoved into the very bottom of his pockets. The tour boat is flat and long, outlined by neon strips that change color so slowly Jihoon hardly even notices it. 

Soonyoung smiles, close lipped, as though the chill might make his teeth hurt. “But it’s nice, still, isn’t it?” He looks out towards the city light shimmering in the reflection of the black river. “I don’t think the experience is as good from inside.”

Jihoon rubs the toe of his boot against the thin layer of snow collecting as it falls. “There’s ice on the deck,” he says. “Probably a public safety violation.”

“Maybe we should have gone ice skating,” Soonyoung muses.

“I wouldn’t have agreed to that.”

Soonyoung straightens. “Why _ did _ you agree to this?”

Jihoon’s head whips up to look at him, surprised to find the question asked in jest rather than genuine offense or irritation at his standoffishness. He shrugs, averting his eyes, suddenly embarrassed. “I don’t know.”

Soonyoung doesn’t seem shocked. His expression goes sheepish, then earnest. “Because; I can’t read you at all,” he says. “When I asked for your number, I was certain I was going to be rejected.”

“Then why did you ask?”

Soonyoung tips his head to the side. “Might as well. And I thought you were cute.”

“Past tense,” Jihoon observes, eyes narrowing.

“Well, I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to be called cute, that’s all.”

“Hm. Maybe you can read me better than you think.”

Soonyoung laughs, short and surprised. “Can’t we talk about something else? This is really embarrassing.”

“You started it.”

“I know, but I don’t have great foresight.” Soonyoung smiles, then takes a long look at him. “Are you really that cold? We can go inside.”

“No, I just wanted to complain.”

“You have a weird disposition.”

“So do you.” Jihoon grins, a little predatory. Now he’s having fun.

“Let’s stop this,” Soonyoung says, flushing. 

“Okay. What else should we talk about?”

“What I wanted to talk about. Back at the Bottle Rocket album launch. About your song.”

“Which one? I have credits on that whole album.”

“The title track. I’ve listened to it a hundred thousand times.”

“When you choreographed for it,” Jihoon clarifies. He tucks his chin into his collar again, hoping the heat of his own breath will warm him up.

Soonyoung leans against the rail. “Have you ever watched it?”

“Once,” Jihoon says.

Soonyoung winces. “Man. That bad?”

Jihoon shakes his head. “No.” Soonyoung stares at him expectantly. “I watched it one time straight through, beginning to end. I’m never really able to picture that kind of thing in my head, but when Chan showed me the video, I just felt like...that was what I would have imagined, if I could’ve.” Jihoon risks frostbite to take his hand from his pocket and card his bangs back. “Maybe that’s why I agreed to this.”

“Because you like my dancing?”

“Because I’m curious.”

“About my dancing?”

“Yeah, I came out on a boat in the middle of January to watch you do the point dance to Momento,” Jihoon says, exasperated. “No. I’m curious about you.”

Soonyoung laughs, popping up off the railing. He gets in position to start the chorus section, turned sideways, ready to sweep one leg out behind him in a wide arc. “It’s like this—” he starts, eyes bright.

And then Soonyoung’s planted foot slips on the ice, and in the panic to regain his balance—over the low side of the boat he goes. Splash.

Soonyoung wipes his eyes stubbornly, as if to pretend he isn’t crying at all. “It’s never a big thing. I don’t know. It’s always all these little things, and they pile up, and when I finally look at all of them, I realize that I just feel hurt. And I don’t want to be hurt. Least of all by you.”

Jihoon watches him pace from the center of the couch, back and forth between the too-small space separating the coffee table from the edge of the cushions.

“I don’t want to break up,” Soonyoung says, stopping where he stands, eyebrows furrowed. His nose is pink. “I don’t.”

Jihoon looks up at his face. “I think we need to.”

Soonyoung sits. His keys clang against the coffee table from inside his pocket. “I...why?”

“I’m not me when I’m with you,” Jihoon says. It makes his skin crawl, how sometimes he gets antsy, jokingly cruel on the instinct. “You make me someone else. It’s not good. It’s not a good thing.”

Soonyoung doesn’t flinch, never does. Jihoon doesn’t get it; how he takes everything in stride, bears its weight like it’s been a part of him all along. “Maybe that’s who you’re supposed to be,” he says. “Who you are with me.”

“It’s not...I don’t think that—”

“Are you better or worse? As a person.”

“Neither. I just get—different.”

“Then be different,” he says plainly. “With me. Is that so bad?”

Jihoon feels his gut roll. “We’re—we’re not compatible. We just aren’t.”

“We are,” Soonyoung says. He reaches, grabs Jihoon by the wrist, squeezing at his pulse point. “We are. We just don’t try hard enough.”

“I don’t think it should be this difficult,” Jihoon says hotly, tugging his wrist back. “I can’t give you the things you want. At least not in the way you want them. That’s incompatibility. Let’s—stop this.”

“I thought we figured this out in...Tokyo. I thought we fixed this.”

“But I don’t think we changed. We just got better at pretending we did.”

Soonyoung puts his hands on Jihoon’s knees, looks at them there. Jihoon tucks his own hands beneath his thighs, feeling the scratchy make of the couch. 

“I hate when you pull away from me,” Soonyoung says clear and sure. Sad eyes.

“I don’t mean to.”

"You do." Soonyoung wipes his eyes on his shoulder again, hasty. He has sensitive skin, and the rough fabric will probably leave him red and irritated in about an hour from now. “I think you’re right,” he says eventually. He puts his hands back on the coffee table, gripping the edge of it. “Let’s not do this anymore.”

The memory starts dissolving, every aspect of the room liquifying and crashing to the floor. Soonyoung is standing up, hiking his bag higher up his shoulder, giving Jihoon the kind of look that almost has him taking everything back, when he, too, melts like candle wax, and then there’s no apartment. No couch. No door.

“Do I have to?” Soonyoung complains.

“No,” Jihoon says, pouring out the soju shot. “But I think it might be fun if you did.”

Soonyoung glares at him, then the glass, sighing deeply before picking it up. He knocks the bottom of it against the table and throws it back, face twisting at the nose-stinging taste of it.

“See,” Jihoon says, satisfied. “That wasn’t so bad.”

“Yes it was,” Soonyoung replies, stuffing an entire dumpling into his mouth. He glances at Jihoon, pouting exaggeratedly. “I can’t believe you shot my date idea down.”

“No offense, but I don’t think we need to do anything else elaborate for a while. Considering, well. Whatever you’d call what happened last time. And an escape room? Seriously?”

“I thought it sounded fun. And the ferry wasn’t elaborate, it was just a boat.” Soonyoung picks up another dumpling between his chopsticks, sets it down, and picks it up another way. “Can you eat already? You’re making me feel weird.”

Jihoon laughs. “Fine,” he says, poking through the fish cakes until he finds one that seems to suit his fancy. “Have one.”

“No! It’s too spicy. I’ll get—it’s not attractive.”

“Eat it,” Jihoon goads.

“You’re so bossy,” Soonyoung says, crossing his arms.

“Says the guy who told me to eat.”

“That was a spirit. You’re hearing things.”

Outside the tent, melting snow collects in droplets on the clear portions of red tarp, the inside foggy from the heat and condensation. It’s warm in the stall, but the cold still creeps along the concrete where it wafts beneath the gaps in the build of it. Jihoon pours Soonyoung another shot glass.

“Seriously?”

Jihoon nods.

Soonyoung takes it reluctantly. He tosses the shot back, hissing. “You’ll regret this,” he says, but he’s smiling. Beneath the table, the toe of Soonyoung’s boot presses down over Jihoon’s own. 

Jihoon checks his mailbox on the way to work. He’s got a package slip, a new credit card from the bank, and an innocuous looking envelope about the size of a business card, the paper sturdy as cardstock, thick and rough. He opens it, tucking the rest of the mail under his arm.

_ To Whom It May Concern, _ it says. _ KWON SOONYOUNG has had LEE JIHOON erased from his memory. Please refrain from mentioning their relationship to one another from this point forwards. Thank you. —Lacuna Inc. _

Jihoon feels like he’s been doused with cold water. He crumples the message, intending to throw it out. One sharp corner stabs painfully into his palm as he walks out the lobby door. He drops the card in the first trash can he sees on the way to the bus stop, annoyed that it’s going to hang over him all day at work. On his lunch break, he stays in the studio and locks the door. Looks up Lacuna. Stares at its headquarter’s address long enough for his eyes to sting and burn. Look's at Soonyoung's silhouette, passing by the window of the studio door.

First, he deletes Soonyoung’s number. Then, he dials the one Naver pulled up for him, and schedules an appointment of his own.

“What…” Jihoon says to the phone, groggy.

Soonyoung, bright and chipper, says, “Ah, fuck. Did I calculate the time difference wrong?”

The clock blinks out a glowing red two-forty-six in the morning. “Completely.”

“I’m sorry!” Soonyoung says, voice laced with static. “I can call back later.”

Jihoon rolls over, looking at the yellow streetlight slicing daggers through his window. “No, it’s okay. How’s L.A.? Was the flight alright?”

“Normally I can sleep on airplanes, but this time, not so much. L.A. is...well, it’s a place. I can’t tell if you’d like it much.”

“I didn’t ask if I’d like it, I asked about you.”

“I know, but I thought of you anyways,” Soonyoung says, cheeky. “Romantic, right?”

“Sure,” says Jihoon. 

“I wish you were here,” Soonyoung says in a rush.

“Why? You said I might not like it.”

“You won’t, but still. I wish everyone here was you.”

Jihoon fidgets, foamy feelings gathering in his gut, the very bottom his stomach. Sometimes, the things Soonyoung says feel like getting his head wrapped in a hot, wet towel. Impossible to breathe through. “I don’t want to go places. I don’t like not knowing everyone.”

“It was just a thought.”

“Sorry. I’m being a killjoy, aren’t I?”

“A little.”

"Sorry."

“Don’t worry about it. I mean, I did wake you up at—what time is it over there?”

“Almost three.” Jihoon’s smiling, though. He presses the heel of his hand between his eyebrows, trying to will himself into awakeness. “Keep talking,” he says. He stretches his arm out, reaching to turn on the light. As he sits up, the blankets fall around his waist, cold air creeping up the line of his spine. “It sounds like you have a lot you want to tell me.” 

The line fills with rustling. It sounds like Soonyoung is getting up, closing a door. “I do,” he says. “You wouldn’t believe it! Yesterday, I—”

“Do you,” Soonyoung starts, rolling up onto the balls of his feet, back down to the heels again, “want to come back to my place? I’m not far.”

Jihoon considers. Soonyoung is—dorky, for sure, and definitely over eager, but the worst part is that Jihoon thinks he might kind of like him. Understand him—no, but if Soonyoung’s asking if Jihoon wants to sleep with him right now, then. Yeah. He kind of does.

“You’re making me walk?” Jihoon asks, eyebrow raised. The tarp of the street stall behind Soonyoung frames his face in a bright red painting.

Soonyoung pulls his jeans up by the belt loops, taking a firmer stance. “You want me to carry you?” he says, voice hitching up, face twisted in confusion.

“I was kidding,” Jihoon says, charmed. He throws his head back and cackles, hand to his sternum.

Soonyoung straightens, shoving him by the arm. “I couldn’t tell!”

“Would you really have carried me?”

“Piggybacking? Yeah. Bridal-style? No.”

Jihoon blinks.

Soonyoung makes a face. Steps stiffly in one direction. “I live this way,” he says, gesturing with his arm formally, looking like a crossing guard.

The walk is not particularly long or arduous; there’s no hills, and it hasn’t been getting cold enough for ice to start freezing in layer upon layer over the ground, but Soonyoung keeps shooting him these long, sideways looks, fidgety. It makes Jihoon feel tense until Soonyoung finally takes a hand out of his coat pocket and grabs Jihoon’s, palm a little clammy from the nerves. Soonyoung watches for his reaction, then trudges forwards with more certainty when Jihoon doesn’t give one, other then adjusting so that Soonyoung’s thumb is underneath his own before it starts to irritate him.

In the elevator, Soonyoung presses the wrong floor button, tries to make it go away by pressing it again, and then finally presses the right one when he’s accepted that that isn’t how control panels work.

“Sorry,” he says anxiously. “That’s the level my car is on in the parking garage. I always press it on autopilot.”

The doors open on the fourth floor for no one. Soonyoung squeezes Jihoon’s hand. When they close again, the elevator chimes loudly, a mechanical groan overtaking the quiet.

Jihoon looks at their reflections in the metal, split in half where one door meets the other. “You’re not one of those people who gets motion sickness on elevators, are you?” he says.

Soonyoung turns his head, brows furrowed. “No. Why?”

Jihoon kicks a foot out at their mirror images, pointing. “You were making a face.”

“I wasn’t!”

“You’re doing it right now,” Jihoon laughs.

The elevator dings again, eighth floor. Jihoon steps out first, reading the guide plaque on the hallway wall. “Which number are you?”

“Eight-eleven,” Soonyoung says. Jihoon can hear his smile. Turns left. Counts the apartment numbers down as he walks along. He waits with his back against the wall as Soonyoung punches his security code in, the lock clicking audibly open.

Inside, Soonyoung’s apartment is disorganized and mostly dark. He lets Jihoon get his boots off before stepping into him, dangerous with proximity.

It’s a kiss like a knee meeting pavement; shorter than it seems, a sharp pang, then dull. Jihoon pulls on the collar of Soonyoung’s coat, dragging him down to eye level. Soonyoung takes the hint, shrugging it off his shoulders, shimmying his arms from the sleeves until it crumples in a pile on the floor. He makes a strangled sound when Jihoon licks into his mouth, reaches with cold hands to untuck the front of his shirt from his jeans and belt.

Soonyoung is like putty; meltable, malleable. He seizes up when Jihoon kisses his throat, like he’s going to go for the jugular and kill him with one bite. When Jihoon huffs out a breath in the same spot, Soonyoung sinks against the edge of the counter where Jihoon has corralled him, a hand coming up the nape of his neck. He makes Jihoon—angry, or something. Makes him feel like his heart is trapped inside his chest, roasting on a spit, fat dripping and hissing as it falls and hits the fire. Infuriating with so little resistance, but Jihoon likes it. Soonyoung lets Jihoon push him up into the counter again, a knee wedged between his leg to make him stand, and Jihoon likes that, too. Control.

Jihoon slides his hands up Soonyoung ribcage beneath his shirt. “Which way’s your bedroom?” he says, like he can’t just turn his head and see it, the door just slightly ajar.

“Um,” Soonyoung says, face flushed. Jihoon doesn’t wait for him to answer and starts walking them towards the narrow hall, amused. On the way, Soonyoung hits a hipbone on the corner of a small, decorative table, jostling it’s contents; a ceramic bowl with coins in it and a pair of scratched looking sunglasses, lenses dark. He hisses and limps all the way to the threshold while Jihoon laughs and laughs, nudging him onwards.

Jihoon pulls a belt loop to make Soonyoung face him, then shoves him backwards so he’ll fall onto the bed. Soonyoung rises onto his elbows that way, sitting up halfway to watch. Jihoon crawls over him, casting a colorless shadow between them. Sits atop Soonyoung’s thighs. He rolls the heel of his palm over Soonyoung’s hip, watching his expression for the initial wince of pain, then the relief. 

Soonyoung makes a bashful kind of face, the shyness of it almost out of place. “You’re really sexy,” he says, seemingly flustered to be admitting it.

Jihoon feels himself getting hot. He deflects habitually. “Thought you thought I was cute. Back then.”

Soonyoung senses the power shifting. “You are,” he says, grinning mad. “That’s what makes this so sexy.”

Jihoon puts a hand over Soonyoung’s face and turns his head away while Soonyoung cackles. Soonyoung's hand go to Jihoon's hips, holding him closer. When they meet eyes through the gaps in Jihoon’s fingers, Soonyoung licks his palm with the flat of his tongue.

Soonyoung calls when he’s back in Seoul. Jihoon invites him to his apartment, not knowing what else to do.

“Hi,” Soonyoung says, when Jihoon opens the door. He’s—giddy. Wants to listen to all the demos Jihoon’s been working on while he was gone. Goes right to the fridge and pops the tab on a can of coke to split between them, familiar. Jihoon makes him listen to the tracks with headphones, too anxious to sit there with them all playing out loud.

“I like this one,” Soonyoung says, when he makes it to the third track, tapping the beat out, white headphones slipping down the back of his head. “Makes me wanna dance. You should tell the company to hire me again.”

Jihoon lifts a brow, nudging Soonyoung with his knee from where he’s sitting on the coffee table. “Finally gonna stick around in Korea for a little while?”

Soonyoung gives him a look, a little bit of hurt swirling around in it like a bunch of fish in a koi pond. Too much too soon. “Hey,” he says, frowning.

Jihoon shrinks a little. “Sorry. That was—I know.”

The headphones finally slip down to Soonyoung’s neck. “Besides,” he says carefully. “I’m sick of traveling. I want to be home.”

“I’m also sick of your traveling,” Jihoon says.

Soonyoung pulls the headphones off completely, holding them in his lap, the music still faintly flowing out the speakers, tinny and incoherent. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“We already...went over that part.”

“I know, but you didn’t accept my apology.”

Jihoon crosses his legs at the ankle, waves a hand dismissively. “I’m accepting it now.”

Soonyoung pulls the adjustable part of the headphones together and apart again, the plastic clicking. “Okay,” he says. “But I still want to understand you better. You have to start telling me things now.” Soonyoung looks at him, laughs a little. “Don’t look so freaked out! I’m not saying you have to do it right this moment.”

“I—okay.” He leans forward, weight in his palms atop Soonyoung’s thighs, and kisses him. A peace offering. He pulls back, puts the headphones back on Soonyoung’s head. In the sound leakage, he hears the song switch, glancing at the laptop screen to see which track is next.

Jihoon startles, reaches quickly for the mute button on the keyboard. It’s one he never submitted to anyone, but it’s still sitting on his hard drive, nonetheless. Wrote it one week into Tokyo. An ugly song.

“What?” Soonyoung says, looking slightly alarmed. Expression wide open.

“Nothing,” Jihoon says. He shifts his finger two key over, holding the increase volume button down, resolute, caught. “I just like to listen to this one super loud.”

“You can drive?”

Soonyoung feigns offense. “What, you think I’m not smart enough to get my license?”

“Not that,” Jihoon laughs. “It just seems like you with a vehicle should be illegal.”

“I’ve never gotten a ticket, or gotten into a crash!” Soonyoung says proudly. “Well, I mean, I’ve gotten a few parking tickets, but those are—irrelevant.”

“Right,” Jihoon says slowly.

Soonyoung sighs, exasperated. “Do you want a ride or not?”

“I want the ride,” Jihoon says. “It’s you or interact with some dude on UberX.”

“I’m flattered,” Soonyoung replies flatly.

“I didn’t even know you were at headquarters today.” A lie. Jihoon had passed by the practice rooms downstairs on his way out for lunch earlier, and seen Soonyoung filming the choreography reference all alone in a studio. He watched for a minute, feeling strangely guilty, like he shouldn’t have been seeing him. Soonyoung was staring past himself in the mirrors, sound of the bass making the walls shudder all around.

“They hired me back on again for Bottle Rocket,” Soonyoung says proudly. He gestures for Jihoon to jiggle the handle on the passenger side in order to open the door. “Guess they liked my work.”

Jihoon ducks inside the car. “Maybe you’re just cheap,” he muses.

Soonyoung punches him in the arm and then buckles into his seat. He misses the ignition twice with the key while Jihoon laughs to himself, and the car roars to life, old engine bellowing like something from the pits of hell. When he comes to the first intersection, he inches into the right turn, pausing to look at Jihoon and say, “You live this way, right?”

“Soonyoung, you’ve been there before. You were in my shower. This is literally the street name, you just have to take it a few miles down.”

The car lurches forwards, completing the turn. “Hey, that was weeks ago, and you know I never learn streets! I just go by landmarks. It works!”

Soonyoung drives with the music blasting high enough to shake the frame of his car, the old speakers distorting the majority of the sound into pulsating nonsense, images in the rearview mirror going fuzzy as everything around it vibrates.

The silhouette of Jihoon's building rises into view. Soonyoung pulls into in a arguably illegal space next to a crosswalk, no signs or meters in sight.

Parked, Soonyoung doesn’t hesitate. He leans over the console, left hand flattening against Jihoon’s thigh, and kisses him. His right hand cups one side of Jihoon’s face, angling him accordingly. The gutsiness of it catches Jihoon off guard, but Soonyoung’s been swinging between shy and bold since the first time he ever met him. Jihoon knows he’s given the inch that’s allowed Soonyoung’s mile.

He pushes Soonyoung back with two fingers in his chest. “I’m hungry,” he says bluntly.

Soonyoung takes a second to regain his focus. “Do you...do you want to go somewhere? Or...we can cook something in your apartment?”

“You can cook? When did that happen?”

“I can make ramyeon. Or a mean kimchi fried rice. That’s about it.”

“I could make that in high school,” Jihoon says, lifting one brow.

“It’s all I can offer,” Soonyoung replies, completely serious. 

Jihoon pushes down the latch on the passenger side door. “Alright, let’s go.”

Soonyoung jumps out from the vehicle. Takes a second to push in the side mirror in the driver’s side so nobody clips it while they’re gone. Gives him a look like, if you don't love me yet, you will.

“Um, sunbae,” the new intern says stiffly. Jihoon’s let him suffer for his own amusement, perfectly aware that his reputation in the booth precedes him. “There’s...somebody here to see you.”

Jihoon doesn’t dignify that with a look, trimming the silent ends off a few audio files with a loud click. “Let ‘em in.”

“I’ll, uh, go get him, then,” the intern says. He hears the rustle of clothing as he bows before the door clicks shut again, set to magnets. Then, Jihoon laughs. He’s been planning to take the poor kid out for drinks and dinner at the end of his first month and letting him know the company hazing ritual is over, but it’s hard to keep up the act.

The door handle turns, and the bottom of it drags across the carpeted floor as it opens. Jihoon continues clipping files. “Listen, Wonwoo, I’m going to throttle you if you came in here to change just one miserable syllable of the lyrics on this album again. The baton has been passed off. We are not rerecording, so you can turn right around and spare the trainees some grief for once.”

“Um,” Soonyoung says, stifling a laugh. “It’s just me.”

Jihoon whips around in his chair, surprised and reasonably a bit mortified, and takes in the sight of Soonyoung as the hearty and sharp aroma of jjajangmyeon fills the room. “I brought dinner. Do they really let you talk to your colleagues that way?”

“Only when Wonwoo’s being a jackass, nobody’s gonna stop me.”

“Oh, come on, Wonwoo's not an ass. You like Wonwoo!” Soonyoung pouts exaggeratedly until Jihoon submits and agrees. 

“I thought you weren’t coming home for another week.”

“We finished up early. I wanted to be a surprise!” Soonyoung strikes a dignified pose, chin high, eyes closed, and brows raised, still holding the plastic bags of take-out. At the silence, he cracks an eye skeptically. “Can’t you at least pretend to be more excited to see me?”

Jihoon makes an exaggerated face. “I’m just surprised,” he says. “Come on, sit.”

Soonyoung drags the rolling stool up to the desk and set the bags on the flat counter before the soundboard. He uses a blunt nail to tear into the bag rather than bother with the effort of untying the knotted up handles, ripping it down the side, cracking it like a walnut shell. He lays out the bowls and chopsticks, spreading them across the table.

Soonyoung inches closer. He slides a hand over Jihoon’s shoulder and down to his chest, pressing his face into the back of his head and planting a wet kiss on the nape of his neck. Jihoon can feel Soonyoung smiling against his skin, the faint press of his teeth, the globe of his cheek. One finger slips into the gap between two buttons on Jihoon’s shirt.

“You’re distracting me,” Jihoon says. 

Soonyoung kisses just behind his ear. “Then be distracted,” he replies.

Jihoon pokes Soonyoung’s thigh with the ends of his chopsticks, a warning. “There’s a window in that door.”

He feels how Soonyoung turns his head to check for himself. Resigned, drops his forehead to Jihoon’s shoulder, then sits upright again, sighing. “You’re no fun.”

“I’m employed,” Jihoon says flatly. “Don’t you like that about me?”

Soonyoung laughs. Settles back in his seat. “I guess so.” The plastic lid pop off the takeout container. Jihoon continues clipping soundbytes while Soonyoung mixes his noodles and sauce together. The smell makes his mouth water. “Aren’t you gonna eat?” Soonyoung says.

“In a minute. I just want to…” he trails off, clicking around. Soonyoung’s eyes bore into the side of his face like a high-powered drill.

“Can’t you—”

“Just a minute!” Jihoon snaps. 

Soonyoung holds his hands up, backing down. “Okay,” he says, anxious. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

Soonyoung’s hair is slightly frosty by the time they make it to the foot of Jihoon’s building, bangs stiff with ice and swept away from his face. Upstairs, the keypad beeps mechanically as Jihoon types in the code, rubber buttons lighting up green under his finger. The lock clicks, the door opens. Jihoon steps inside and turns around to look at Soonyoung.

“You should take a hot shower,” Jihoon says awkwardly, taking another step backwards. Soonyoung takes one forward, starting to shrug off his coat. Jihoon touches the sleeve of it. “Is this dryer safe?”

“I cut the tags out a long time ago since they were itchy,” Soonyoung says sheepishly. “So I don’t really know.” He toes his boots off and the snow encrusted around the soles begins to melt to the floor.

Jihoon folds the coat over his forearm. “I’ll put it in front of the heater and...find you some clothes. The bathroom is just around the corner there.”

“Thanks,” says Soonyoung.

Jihoon watches Soonyoung shuffle towards the hall, then arranges Soonyoung’s coat over the slatted vents of the heater, the nylon swishing against itself as he adjusts it. He leans on the back of the couch, laughing a little into his hand. Tonight had certainly been pretty unique as far as first dates go; tourist attractions in a city he’s lived in for the better part of five years, his date falling into the Han River. And technically a coworker, at that.

Soonyoung’s head peeks around the corner. “Uhm, sorry,” he says. “But I can’t figure out how to turn the shower on…”

Jihoon looks up from the heater. Soonyoung’s hair is ruffled and his sweater is inside out, like he’d had the consideration to at least put it back on before coming out into the living room, albeit still damp and icy. Jihoon crosses the room, and Soonyoung steps against the doorway to let him by. 

Jihoon leans over the edge of the tub to reach for the dials. “You have to pull this one out, then turn it. Clockwise to make it hotter.” Steam starts wafting upwards as the spout spits water into the ceramic basin. “Then just pull up on this part to make it come out of the showerhead, and reverse all of that to shut the water off.”

“Right,” Soonyoung says. His shoulder bumps Jihoon’s as he places his hand palm up under the rush of the water, adjusting the level of heat.

Jihoon shuffles back out into the hall, slightly mortified at the way he’d been explaining. Like this was information Soonyoung would be needing again in the future. The bathroom door shuts quietly.

Jihoon searches through his dresser for clothes he’s willing to let Soonyoung borrow, settling on some worn stuff he used to work out all the time in; old adidas track pants, a huge crewneck hoodie. He gathers the will to open the bathroom door while Soonyoung’s still in the shower, letting the wall of steam wash over him and quickly setting the folded clothes on the countertop.

Jihoon scrolls through instagram on the couch, listening to the rush of the water. When it finally shuts off, Jihoon glances over his shoulder to catch Soonyoung still rubbing at his hair with a towel, frizzing against the cotton. 

Soonyoung smiles at him, cheeky. “I don’t usually get naked on the first date.”

Jihoon rolls his eyes. “I can’t believe you fell off the boat.”

“I mean, it was kind of exciting, wasn’t it?”

Jihoon turns around, using the back of the couch as an armrest, setting his chin atop his crossed hands. “You seriously fell off the boat.”

“It’ll be memorable,” Soonyoung says. He drapes the towel around his neck, damp hair sticking up funnily. “In the future.”

And Jihoon’s thinking that if Soonyoung came over here, he wouldn’t stop him. And he doesn’t stop him, when Soonyoung walks over and leans down, kisses him chastely, holding back.

“Thanks for the outfit” he says. Jihoon glances down. The pants have basically become leggings, skin tight down to the ankles. Jihoon orders him around in the kitchen, directing him towards a stash of old plastic bags beneath the sink he can throw his wet clothes in, pointing out a winter coat by the door he can borrow for the way back to his apartment tonight.

“If you call, I’ll bring these back,” Soonyoung says in the doorway, pinching and snapping the fabric of his clothes. He bites his lip, holding down his smile.

“It feels like you’re just letting me know you’re going to rob me right now.”

“It’s not really robbery if I tell you about it beforehand, is it?”

“I think that’s just blackmail.”

“Do you ever let up?”

Jihoon smiles sideways, a dimple forming in one cheek like the smooth inside of a seashell. “No,” he says. “Not really. I don’t.”

“I’m not _ leaving _,” Soonyoung says. He throws the sweater he was trying to fold onto the floor. “I was always going to Tokyo. I told you. I’m not leaving, I’m just done asking you to be kind to me.”

“I’m unkind to you?”

“You’re—look. I always know when you’re joking, and I get that I can be overwhelming to you, but would it kill you to just...let me like you?” Soonyoung’s standing at the foot of the bed, halted in the middle of packing a duffel bag. “Sometimes I feel like I’m forcing you to date me, and I hate it.” 

“Would it kill _ you _to just respect my boundaries a little?” 

Soonyoung blinks. Jihoon regrets saying it already. 

Soonyoung hauls the duffel bag up and onto the bed, shoving everything he hasn’t folded into it hastily; his favorite pair of jeans he keeps leaving at Jihoon’s place, a t-shirt he only ever wears beneath one particular wool sweater. It’s itchy, he always says, then refuses to just get rid of it. Jihoon can feel Soonyoung’s thoughts gathering into a white hot ball of pissed off plasma, the hurt crackling around him like electricity.

“So I’m not allowed to say I like you?” he finally spits. “How is that reasonable? All you do is push me away. If you can’t stand a little affection, why ever agree to go on a date with me in the first place? Why keep...leading me on, then?” Soonyoung stares at him, severe and long. He chews on the inside of his cheek, then zips up the duffel bag, resolute. “Forget it, Jihoon.” His eyes are flashing, bright with anger. He can’t get the strap up onto his shoulder fast enough, find his fucking shoes. “I guess I’ll get Mingyu to come pick up anything I left here while I’m in Japan, then. Since it’s all such a huge burden to you.”

“Will you tell me why you made me get all dressed up now?” Soonyoung says. His suit is nice, well tailored, but the tie has got about ten different colors clashing in it, like he can’t leave the house without wearing at least one thing that’s kind of ridiculous. “Are we going to that new fancy place in Hongdae? Because I don’t think I like those small plate kind of restaurants. It should be seriously illegal to leave restaurants that hungry.”

Jihoon hands over the invitation for the company’s end of year party Minghao had left around the offices when he was still prototyping the design. Soonyoung squints at it. “You really need glasses,” Jihoon says.

“Yeah,” Soonyoung agrees, transparent enough for Jihoon to know he will be making no efforts to get some. “What is this? The text is too small for me to read.”

“The company is doing the end of the year thing tonight. I thought I should bring you. Since you know everyone, and. Y’know.”

“I know what?” Soonyoung says, grinning. “That you like me?”

“I don’t like you.”

“I feel like I have a lot of evidence to the contrary. Like—”

“Shut it.”

Soonyoung winks, face scrunching up, but snaps his mouth closed. He looks at the invitation again. “Let’s go,” he says. “If you really hate it, we can just go home.”

“Okay,” Jihoon says.

“Don’t just say ‘okay’ if you really don’t want to. I mean, I’d like to go, but it’s not really a huge letdown if we don’t.”

Jihoon crosses his arms, tucking his hands between his ribs and his biceps. He’s quiet for a while, trying to decide on a way to word it all out. He promised to be honest, but he’s only ever been good at processing his emotions in the retrospect. He looks at Soonyoung’s knees. “I just don’t like how people will look at me.”

Soonyoung reaches across the gap and puts Jihoon’s watch the right way around on his wrist, fixing the sleeve of his sweater along with it. “So it’s a control thing?”

Jihoon is—sweating. “No, it’s just—I feel—smothered, sometimes.” He shrugs. It’s not the right sentence, but it feels close enough. “People will talk.”

Soonyoung looks at him. Eyes like a carving knife. “Yes. So let them talk.”

Soonyoung opens the door, squinting into the hallway light. He eyes Jihoon, the snowflakes still melting in his hair. Winter coat just swallowing him. It’s late. Later than anyone should be turning up at anyone else’s door, but here Jihoon is. Soonyoung sleeps in a t-shirt and boxers year round, straight through the winter, because in anything else he’d be too hot, sweating it out. He’s a human furnace, especially at night. Soonyoung says nothing, just looks at him with a sort of resignment in his eyes, an inability to distinguish thirst from hunger.

“Soonyoung, I—”

Soonyoung frowns, cutting him off bluntly. “Do you still love me?” 

The only sound is that of a humidifier whirring faintly somewhere back in Soonyoung’s bedroom.

Jihoon opens his mouth, then closes it. A droplet of melted water from his hair runs down the center of his forehead, cold as all hell. What he can’t say is this: I have two fears. One, I’m afraid I’ll always love you. Two, I’m afraid that I don’t. Even more, maybe, that I’ll never figure out how to leave, how to let you go. 

Soonyoung gives him a long hard look, then steps backwards, about to close the door. Gaze to the floor, defeated.

“Less,” Jihoon says, quiet, and his chest goes tight as it leaves him. “Less. I love you less.”

Soonyoung’s eyes flit back and forth between Jihoon’s own, looking for a lie. Jihoon does his best to level the stare, hating how hard it suddenly is. It’s like trying to see through steel, the silence swelling in between them.

Soonyoung grips the door, palm flat against the edge of it. “I don’t wanna talk,” he says resolutely. Expression betraying nothing. He reaches across the threshold and wipes the melted snow from above Jihoon’s eye.

For a week Jihoon’s been having this dream where he’s on his knees, asking Soonyoung to leave him. Like he can never seem to do it himself, incapable of turning Soonyoung down the second he sees him. On his knees. Even now, it’s so fucking easy to do this, over and over and over again; back and forth. From one apartment to another, from Seoul to New York City, north pole to south. Jihoon thinks he likes Soonyoung against his will, feels his eyes boring into his back wherever he goes.

Soonyoung doesn’t back away when Jihoon steps forward into the foyer. The proximity gives him a rush.

“Then let’s not talk,” Jihoon says.

Soonyoung reaches and pulls Jihoon’s scarf off, harsh about it, like a spool of yarn unraveling. Every stride further into the apartment has the string unraveling further. First the room, so that when Jihoon kisses Soonyoung with vipers in his mouth there’s nothing to push him up against. Then Soonyoung unspools, shivering out into nothingness. For a second there’s just Jihoon, and then after a while, there isn’t even that.

Soonyoung city hops his way through three lonely months. Osaka, Beijing, Nagoya, Chicago—he had so many gigs Jihoon thought they’d start piling up and tripping him up on the sidewalk any time he’d try to go anywhere. Jihoon unfollowed him on instagram, but by nature of the algorithm, clips of Soonyoung still popped up on every refreshed discover page. And of course he watched them. And of course Soonyoung was good. He was better than good, really, and that’s why he was almost never in Seoul. He was in demand.

Jihoon’s life continued on as usual. At first it was fucking awful, then eventually it was just alright. He tore through one whole album, hanging late in the studios refining it to hell and back. Got assigned to produce another one, and then another one. 

Soonyoung tried to call him, once, that first month, and Jihoon stared at his name on the screen, just letting it ring and ring and ring. He was still angry that Soonyoung left again. Wondered if he’d been having fun, been fucking an indiscriminate amount of people, been feeling as shitty as he did or worse. In his head it had all became some kind of fucked up competition; who could make the most out of the breakup? Who could wear it best, something to pull around the shoulders like a shroud? 

In the end, it didn’t really matter much. Jihoon wore himself out and down. He dialed, got hit with Soonyoung’s voicemail. An hour later, Soonyoung sent him the address of his Tokyo hotel. He got a flight and permission to work remotely for a little while. Soonyoung wouldn’t meet Jihoon in his rented room, afraid of what they might do.

“You don’t mind heights,” Soonyoung says, tinny through the phone, “right?”

“Is this a diss?”

Soonyoung laughs, short and bright. “No, I just. I haven’t made it to that ferris wheel in Palette Town, and I want to go.” The pause is stiff and overripe, but Soonyoung barrels through. “Will you meet me there? I should be done at the studio by five thirty, so...six? It’ll be cold.”

“I can read the weather report,” Jihoon says.

“I know,” Soonyoung replies. “But you never do.”

By six o’clock, the sun has nearly finished setting. The concrete walkway at the base of the wheel is mildly busy, people milling about. Jihoon leans against the railing, keeping an eye out for Soonyoung, only now wondering if he’s dyed his hair a new color again, or if he’ll still be able to recognize him from afar. In the end, that doesn’t matter either, because Soonyoung approaches from the direction Jihoon isn’t looking in. When Soonyoung steps out in front of him, it startles him, knocks everything he’d been thinking the past three months clear out of his head.

“It’s nice to see you,” Soonyoung says earnestly. Jihoon is surprised by the emotion trapped inside of it—bitter and angry, he’d repainted Soonyoung as a backstabbing, selfish ass. Turns out he was just being the way he’d always been until Jihoon decided it wasn’t convenient for him anymore. Whoops.

“You too,” blurts Jihoon. 

Soonyoung waits like he’s expecting Jihoon to have more to say. He’s the one who came to Tokyo, after all. But Jihoon just stares at him. Wants to say; I woke up one day and I still missed you. I walked all the way here. I’m sorry. But instead he just strides towards the guy taking cash at the platform leading to each ferris car and pays for them both before Soonyoung can say a word about it.

The worker counts the bills, and they step inside the car onto the metal flooring. The door closes and locks, glass foggy around where Soonyoung had briefly placed his hand on it.

“How have you been?” Soonyoung asks, seated square across from him. The neon lights fastened to every square centimeter of the ride jump and transform the plane of his face.

“I’ve been working a lot,” Jihoon says, which isn’t an answer. “They’re letting me produce more independently lately.”

Soonyoung presses his knees together, hands buried in his pockets, almost shy. “Is it everything you thought it’d be?”

Jihoon fidgets.“No,” he says, feeling like they’re having two conversations. “It’s not.”

Soonyoung looks at the ground, the metallic sheen swirling in the lights. The silence breathes, then stiffens. “I—” Soonyoung starts. “I want to say that I’m sorry. For how I left, and how I treated you. Like I didn’t owe you anything.”

“Don’t be sorry. I blew up at you after months of never saying anything. That wasn’t fair. And, you were right”

“Well I never bothered to ask if you were alright. That wasn’t fair either.”

“Are you supposed to be able to read my mind?” Jihoon says. The whimsical music that accompanied them at the base of the ferris wheel is fading the higher their car climbs.

Soonyoung makes a vexed sort of face, but he doesn’t drop his gaze from Jihoon’s. “Don’t we know each other well enough by now for that?”

“Shouldn’t we?” Jihoon says, not knowing the answer. “Do we?”

Soonyoung’s stare slides sideways in increments. “I don’t know.” The car swings idly with slow rotational momentum.

Jihoon’s breath huffs out in an icy cloud before him. He wishes he regretted doing this, or didn’t know why he came all this way, but with Soonyoung finally only half a meter away from him, Jihoon can’t pretend to be indifferent or hateful. All he feels is the relief of familiarity, how much the push and pull still gives him a rush. Soonyoung’s always liked a challenge, and Jihoon’s always liked being challenging.

Soonyoung hunches into the puffy collar of his coat, cautious again. “Listen,” he says, carefully meeting Jihoon’s eye. “I can’t move on. Maybe I didn’t try long enough or hard enough, but I can’t move on. Not from you. I can only just—move forward, carrying this. Please let me carry this.”

Looking backwards on this memory, Jihoon sort of wishes they had just ended it then. That he missed his flight to Tokyo, or never even booked on at all, so that he wouldn’t have to have heard all the things Soonyoung said in the years afterward, felt all those things, got himself strapped to some chair in a Lacuna building to rip it all back out. He wishes he could touch his own shoulder in the memory, but he’s frozen inside it, stuck watching it play out with uncanny precision, wishes he could tell himself to just turn around. Just go. But instead, Jihoon swallows his heart down and says, “okay.” The lights burn an awful crimson, almost hot. 

Soonyoung smiles, the way someone might if you told them a bad joke while they were crying in attempt to make them feel better. “Alright.”

“I don’t want to stay in Tokyo much longer. I don’t like to be away from home.”

“I know.”

Jihoon stares at him. “When you’re back in Seoul, give me a call.”

“I’ll give you one before I’m even headed to the airport.”

“Don’t push it.”

Soonyoung crosses his legs at the ankles, his face rounding out as his expression turns warm without showing his teeth. “I won’t. I just missed you.”

“Um, hey.”

Jihoon looks up from where he’s been stirring his martini, olive on the skewer. Someone’s approached the high-top table he’d been leaning against for the better part of the evening, avoiding the sea of people closer to the open floor and the bar; dark calligraphic hair and eyes. In the retrospective, Jihoon knows that it’s Soonyoung. He looks a little younger, though, and is still carrying the last ounce of baby fat into his early twenties, face softening. “Hi.”

Soonyoung points at the other side of the tabletop. “Do you mind if I…?”

Jihoon shrugs. “Not at all.” Goes back to stirring the contents of the martini. Watches from the corner of his eye as Soonyoung settles, legs crossed casually at the ankle, elbows bent on the table, fidgeting. “You seem nervous,” Jihoon comments, eyebrow raised.

“Do I?” Soonyoung blurts, eyes wide. Jihoon nods. “I just feel a little starstruck. I’ve never been to one of these things before.”

Jihoon grins, neat row of teeth. “They’ll grow on you, and then later you’ll get sick of them. I promise.”

“You work here?” He points at the ground, then waves the gesture away like wiping a slate clean. “Not this building. The company!”

“Yeah. Few years. You?”

“Work sort of drags me all over the place,” Soonyoung says. “But I’m mostly based in Seoul.”

Jihoon finally takes a straight on look at him; friendly eyes, asymmetrical smile. “Oh—uh, me too. Seoul, I mean.”

Soonyoung lifts an eyebrow, amused. “Yeah, I know.” He laughs. “Context clues.” Someone comes in from the balcony, letting in a whirl of frigid air as the door opens and slowly closes. “For a minute I thought maybe you were some new idol I hadn’t heard about yet.”

Jihoon goes warm, feels the back of his neck sizzling a little. “It’d be kind of an unusually late debut, don’t you think? They tend to throw you out there in your teen years. Before you need like, anti wrinkle cream for crow’s feet.”

“It was a come-on,” Soonyoung replies, the smile kind of shy, kind of bold. “I was trying to say that I think you’re handsome." Pause. "I think you’re handsome.” Soonyoung has a sort of confusing flashyness to him, like his confidence is always trailing about three minutes behind him. “Sorry.”

Jihoon takes a long sip from his martini. “So, if you don’t know me, then you definitely don’t work here, do you?”

Soonyoung laughs, sharp and bright. “You’re all business, huh? But no, I don’t officially. I’m not in-house, they just hire me a lot. I was involved with Bottle Rocket’s choreography so I got invited to the celebration for the debut. Y’know, free drinks. With the little toothpick umbrellas! And I promised to sneak my roommate out a few of the desserts.”

“You did the choreo for their title track?”

Soonyoung perks up slightly. “Yeah. Why do you ask?”

Jihoon hears his heartbeat in his ears, goes to fiddle with the wristband of his watch. “I, uh, wrote that song.”

“Did you like it?” Soonyoung says, bright-eyed, leaning closer across the table.

Behind Soonyoung, Chan emerges from the crowd, dressed in a well tailored suit, hair coiffed into concrete level stiffness by the stylists, the other two members Bottle Rocket trailing closely behind. 

“Soonyoung-hyung!” Chan calls. “We want to do shots with you! To celebrate!”

“You’re too young!” Soonyoung calls back. “And I’m too old!”

“You’re twenty-three,” Chan complains. “And there’s only three years between us, come on!”

Soonyoung makes a series of rapid-fire gestures and wide-eyed faces at Chan and Vernon, ending pointedly with a slicing motion that cuts across his neck. Seungkwan drags them both backwards by their collars, fabric pulling away from the napes of their necks.

Jihoon smiles, wry. “You should probably go. Even if you resist, Chan’ll just come back in about four minutes from now.”

“Believe me, I know, but—” Soonyoung blinks, does something kind of funny with his eyebrows. He scratches behind his ear, glancing at Jihoon, then away, then back again. “This might be presumptuous,” he says, “and I’m about to be in Japan for two weeks, but when I get back...can I call you?”

“You don’t have my number.”

“I was hoping that the aspect of me asking for it was implied.”

Jihoon—laughs. “Right.”

Soonyoung smiles, the foundations of it all together very wobbly. “Well?”

Jihoon bits the olive off the toothpick from his drink. Chewing, he says, “hand me your phone.”

Soonyoung pats himself down, searching for it. When he finally forks it over, the screen is cracked, but at full brightness and opened to the new contacts page. Jihoon types out his name, then his number. “There.”

Soonyoung stares at the screen for a prolonged second, then pockets it again at the inside of his suit jacket.

“Making sure I didn’t type out the Tommy Tutone number?”

Soonyoung scratches at his neck, caught. “No,” he says. “I forgot to ask your name, so I was going to pretend to have already known it.”

Chan pops up behind Soonyoung, puts two hands on Soonyoung’s shoulders and squeezes like a boxing coach at the corner of a ring, pep-talk style.

“Hi, Jihoon-hyung,” he says, smarmy, leaning sideways to be seen around Soonyoung’s arm. “I didn’t know you knew Soonyoungie here.” Soonyoung discretely pinches at Chan's neck for the lack of honorifics.

“I don’t” Jihoon says, amused a little. “I was just starting to know him right now.”

“We’ll bring him back,” Chan says, clearly lying, dragging Soonyoung away. Over his shoulder, Soonyoung smiles at him, twisting the light like the thousand scales of a fish, pulled with a hook from the water. 

Jihoon had forgotten that he remembered this moment so well. For years, afterwards, this version of Soonyoung had come back to him in flashes. This Soonyoung woke up with a headache. Walked all the way across the river. This Soonyoung was sorry. For years, Jihoon would remember the slightly ill fitted suit he was wearing—gray but not black with too many breaks—and wish he could pull this particular Soonyoung out from the realm of dreams, of memory. He should have reached for him, then, breaks the barrier in his head put up by Lacuna and does it now.

“What?” Soonyoung says, face open, voice light. Somehow the room has dissipated, torn from the altered memory.

Soonyoung’s hand is soft, pretty. He’s wearing no rings, and no watch. Cufflinks shaped like the head of a tiger. There’s the sound of running water somewhere distant, and Jihoon can feel the process urging him onwards, away from this image to the next.

“Did you forget something?” Soonyoung says, flushing a little.

“No,” Jihoon says, “I—”

Next.

“What are you going so fast for?” Soonyoung asks, trailing behind. He stops walking, nodding his head towards the massive wall of glass taking up half the room, the light shining out through it leaving pool-bottom sun patterns on the old carpeted floor. “You’re missing the…” squinting at a plaque, “sardines!”

Jihoon slows the pace of his steps guiltily, turning around. He hadn’t realized he was speed-running Soonyoung through the aquarium. He shrugs sheepishly. “I’ve been here a couple times before,” he says. “And I really like the jellyfish exhibit near the end. I think it’s next.”

The school of sardines pulses and splits behind Soonyoung as he pulls out the laminated map he picked up near the entrance, squinting to read it in the dark. “I think the tunnel is next, then the jellyfish.” He smiles, and the sardine school flows back together again, a silvery gray mass. “And I’ve never been here before. Let’s go slow!”

The tunnel is long—long enough, or perhaps so poorly lit that the other side sort of just dissipates into darkness, spotted with the glow of comb jellyfish in the next room over. At the top of the arch, a sand tiger shark swims back and forth, slowly, it’s shadow blotting out before it reaches the floor below. The glass is thick enough to make Jihoon’s eyes hurt.

A month ago, Jihoon read a news story about that very sand shark eating one of the others in the tank. The article said it took her twenty-one hours to consume its entire body, and she ate it headfirst. Fucking brutal. Soonyoung meanders ahead, watching a school of fish flit in and out of a porous rock. Jihoon follows him, allows Soonyoung to grab his hand when they stop, holding it behind his back, thumbs pressing into his palm. 

“You know,” Soonyoung says, voice funny sounding as it bounces back off the glass, his head tilted all the way back to stare straight up into the tank from below, “when I was a kid, we used to go visit my grandparents out in Yangpyong, halfway up the mountains. There was this river that ran through their backyard—now that I’m older I realize it was really just a stream, but. Perspective.” Soonyoung’s nails against the pads of Jihoon’s fingers. “It was slow moving, ice cold from the melt, and I’d swim in it all the time. I’d spend hours in there. My dad would have to roll up his jeans to get in and drag me out at sundown. It was crystal clear, y’know, all that uncontaminated water from way up in the atmosphere. But I’d never go under, ‘cause I’d be too afraid to close my eyes.” He looked away from the sharks roaming slowly above him and sideways at Jihoon, smile stretching, elastic. “I was convinced that if I let my guard down, sharks were going to get me. I mean—we were 80 kilometers inland. It was freshwater! Flowing down from a mountain_ into _ the sea. Sharks in the rivers. How stupid is that?”

Jihoon continues standing there behind Soonyoung, staring at the crown of his head tilted backwards, skin tinted green against the blue of the water, audio presentation from the jellyfish room filtering tinnily out from afar. “Sharks in the rivers?” Jihoon repeats lightly. 

Watching this memory, Jihoon knows this is the moment he got stuck in this relationship like walking through quicksand; the more he tried to move, the farther he sank. Ankle, calf, knee.

Soonyoung turns to face him, grinning. “Sharks in the rivers,” he says again. He bumps Jihoon’s shoulder, places a hand at the nape of his neck, squeezing. “Like I was special enough for them to come all the way up the mountain and bite_ me _.” A pincering kind of look. “I should take you, sometime. When we’re free.”

Jihoon wants to keep this memory. Wants to crawl out of his head and hide it somewhere like a spare key, shove it in a drawer he can come back to, eventually, but the comb jellyfish drop away from his vision, and then the tunnel uncoils like a slinky being stretched out, and then there’s just Soonyoung. It’d be so inconsequential if he kept it, wouldn’t it? Just an aquarium. A hallway full of sharks. 

Jihoon touches his forehead, then two fingers to each temple, squinting. Blinks.

The lights in the Lacuna building. They’re starting to hurt.

-

“Hi,” a stranger says, sitting down. He nods across the table, squints at the company badge still clipped to Jihoon’s shirt. The intern to his left passes him a bowl already stuffed with white rice, sliding a menu down. “I don’t think we’ve met? I’m Soonyoung.”

Jihoon tilts his head. “Are you new?”

“Not really,” Soonyoung says. He eyes Jihoon curiously as one of the younger employees offers to pour him a glass, politely refusing. “You probably just haven’t seen me around—I spend a lot of time overseas these days. Although I’m pretty sure I just got assigned to choreograph that new group’s track you’re supposed to be writing, so maybe you’ll be seeing more of me.”

Jihoon nods to Soonyoung’s cup of water. “You’re not drinking?”

Soonyoung’s eyes widen briefly. “No. I don’t handle it well. And I’m tired. You?”

Jihoon shrugs, holding up his glass coke bottle. “Y’know. Work tomorrow.” That, and he’s got a major fucking headache already. Woke up this morning with Jeonghan in his apartment telling him he’d gotten sick and passed out the other day, a padlock kind of look on his face. Apparently, he’s dehydrated enough already. He’d only planned to come to the usual Thursday post-work drinks and barbecue for a courtesy fifteen minutes, and time is ticking down.

Soonyoung laughs, light. “But you’ll stay out this late?”

“It’s only eleven.”

“You just seem the type to need a lot of sleep, that’s all.”

“I prefer it, but I can manage.”

“See, I don’t even manage.”

Jihoon laughs, lifting his glass in a half-cheer. 

Soonyoung stares at him a little longer, chewing. “You seem familiar. Did you go to highschool around here or something?”

Jihoon shakes his head. “No. I’m from Busan. Didn’t move here until a few years ago. Two-thousand twelve?”

Soonyoung hums absently. “Weird,” he says. “Your face is giving me deja-vu.”

“Thanks?”

Soonyoung smiles. “No problem.” Pause. “Did you like it?”

“What, high school?”

Soonyoung nods. “Yeah. Now I’m curious.”

Jihoon shrugs, thinking. “It was alright. I just, y’know, was really interested in music the whole time, so. I focused on that a lot, and when I finally graduated it was a relief.” He shoves rice around in the bowl in front of him, then laughs a little, remembering. “I had a really unflattering haircut.”

“Me too,” Soonoung says gravely. “I can hardly believe anyone had a crush on me then.”

“High school sweetheart?”

“No, just a confession, received and rejected very awkwardly. Why?”

Jihoon grins, all teeth. “You just seem the type, that’s all.”

“To what? Date the same person forever?”

“Kind of. I don’t mean it in a bad way.”

“How do you mean it, then?”

Jihoon squirms, regretting opening his mouth, until he looks up and sees that Soonyoung is just messing with him. “Give me a break, I hardly know you.”

“You’re knowing me right now,” Soonyoung says. Brazen.

Jihoon’s phone vibrates on the table, lighting up with a text from Jeonghan. He checks the time. Glances at Soonyoung. Gathers his dishes together atop the table in a stack. “I’ve gotta go,” he says. “Guess I’ll...see you around?”

Soonyoung nods, waving him away, finally accepting the poor intern’s offer to grill some beef up for him. Jihoon shrugs his coat on, listens to the bell above the door ring as he steps out into the cold. He takes the long way to the subway station, trailing through the park over a layer of wet, frozen then thawed leaves.

It starts to pour, icy and cold, but after the first few seconds, Jihoon realizes there'd be no point in running the rest of the way to his destination. He's going to get soaked, regardless. He’s about to cross the last road when—

“Are you following me?” Soonyoung calls. He's his own miniature weather system carrying a clear umbrella, inert raindrops atop the plastic obscuring sections of his face.

Jihoon turns around, his face green in the glow of the just-changed crosswalk light. “I’m in front of you,” he laughs.

Soonyoung points across the street at the stairwell down to the subway station as he walks closer. “Are you getting on line three?”

“Are _ you _following me?”

“No,” Soonyoung says, eyes crinkling. “I am hitting on you, if that clarifies anything.” Pause. “I really do have to get on three though. I live that way. And I’m waiting on a new credit card, so I can’t really get a cab. No cash!”

Jihoon eyes him, appraisal. “Alright.” He steps into the crosswalk. Starts walking and doesn’t look back. He gets halfway across the street before the urge consumes him completely. He turns to face Soonyoung, still loitering on the sidewalk. “Are you coming?”

Soonyoung jogs for a second to catch up to him. He collapses the umbrella as they descend the subway steps, soles clicking against the loose aluminum stair nosings. Water cascades down the staircase like a multi-tiered waterfall, slippery, loud in it's rush.

In the station, the six train rushes by them, whipping up the air, blustering. Soonyoung leans against a pillar, looking at Jihoon, mirroring the posture against the next pillar in the row. 

Soonyoung’s phone goes off. He digs it out of a pocket, turns the sound level down. He reads the notification, then smiles, his mouth a line drawn in wet sand. He turns the phone around to show Jihoon, holding it out, the brightness turned up enough to burn his eyes.

The six train is gone. The station sits deadly quiet, save for the metallic beat of pop music coming through the speakers faintly, the distant sound of water. 

“Fun fact,” Soonyoung says, reciting, even when he knows Jihoon’s already read it. Behind the notification, the background of Soonyoung’s phone is blurry photo of a ferris wheel. “Glyphis sharks can survive in freshwater for a lifetime.” The screen goes dark, fading into black. The three train’s brakes screech as it glides into the station. Soonyoung looks at Jihoon like: say there’s a line. Say I’m crossing it. “Sharks in the rivers. How strange is that?”

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> 1\. freshwater sharks are real and they're coming for your ass   
2\. every relationship has the Refusal Of The Fantasy and the Blinded By It. which one are you?   
3\. you can find me on twitter @hochitown, i unfortunately will tweet about the nhl and anne of green gables in addition to kpop


End file.
